It is July 2003 and a 14-year-old boy, John, is the victim of a near-fatal stabbing in Altrincham near Manchester. His 16-year-old friend Mark is the chief suspect. But why would a teenager who has never been in any trouble try to kill his best friend? An incredible story emerges of how Mark has been recruited over the web to be a secret service agent by a spy mistress called Janet Dobinson. She promises him sex and riches if he passes an initiation test: to kill his friend John. The schoolboy is propelled into a world of espionage; his bland suburban surroundings become a landscape of mystery and intrigue. But in court, facing charges of attempted murder, Mark finally learns the truth - Janet and a host of other people he met on the internet are all fictitious characters invented by someone bent on manipulating his every move. But who would know enough to trick him into attempting murder?
This film tells the story of Dr Cecil Jacobson, a fertility expert who had a reputation as a miracle worker in the American community where he worked, until it was discovered that he was duping women desperate to conceive by fathering the children himself. When his deception finally came to light, as the result of another enquiry into him falsely telling women they were pregnant and charging them for the process, investigators suspected that Jacobson had fathered up to 75 local children. Jacobson assured parents that he could match them to donors from the same backgrounds and with the same looks and intellect. But in reality he would slip off with a test-tube before a consultation to provide a fresh 'donation' himself. Arrested and brought to trial in 1992, Jacobson was convicted of 53 counts of fraud and perjury - incredibly there was no law against him using his own semen to impregnate his patients. He was sentenced to five years in prison, still protesting his innocence.
Last December in Missouri, heavily pregnant Bobbie Jo Stinnett was strangled and her eight-month-old foetus was cut from her with a kitchen knife. Lisa Montgomery was accused of Bobbie's murder and is currently awaiting trial. If convicted she could face the death penalty. But Montgomery is not the first woman to be accused of such a murder; over the last 15 years a dozen women have committed this heinous crime. This film tells the devastating stories of Lisa and two other women who murdered their heavily pregnant victims, cut the foetuses from their wombs and took the babies home as their own. Chilling home video footage shows Michelle Bica with the baby she had killed to steal. While investigators recount the critical race to find the surviving newborns, forensic psychiatrists and profilers address the big question of why these women did it.
Jean-Claude Romand appeared to have everything: a beautiful wife, two children and a prestigious job as a doctor at the World Health Organisation. But it was all a lie. For 18 years he had lived a torturous double life, and when it finally began to unravel the result was fatal. This documentary reveals how one trivial lie led a man to murder his entire family. When Romand's family were found murdered, no one could understand why. But as the police investigated they discovered that Romand didn't work at the WHO, nor had he worked in the hospitals in Paris as he claimed: he wasn't even a doctor. Every day Romand set off for work - but he would drive off into the countryside or wander around the public areas of the WHO. He paid for his lifestyle by taking money from family and friends who thought he was investing it for them in a Swiss bank account. But as the money ran out and his secret world began to crumble, Romand took the only, terrible, route he thought was left to him.